STAYCATION

Last week Murph and I took 3 days off and had ourselves a little staycation. I originally had hoped we would be somewhere warm and tropical this Spring but it was a no go and fingers are crossed for the fall now. We were super productive and I am really happy about the projects we were able to complete!

WEDNESDAY

• Took Willy to the groomer for his first haircut. Ugh, disaster. He was butchered and came back super stressed. We won't be doing that again.
• Ran to Lowe's and Menards for some yard items.
• Got our first estimate on a new roof and some exterior repairs for the summer.
• Finished up the rest of the yard work.
• Finished the base and put together the sink for instillation downstairs finally!
• Dinner with S&J and Nic!

THURSDAY

• Visit from the plumber to install our sink in the powder room downstairs, it works, and I am loving it!
• Visit from the electrician to fix the wiring to our ceiling fan. He also pointed out our basement wiring is a mess and fixed a couple other minor issues we had going on.
• Visit from Murph's dad, who generously took all of our yard waste home with him to burn, Thanks Denny!!!
• Got our 2nd estimate on the roof and exterior work.
• Trip to the vet with Willy, as if he wasn't strung our enough already.

FRIDAY

• Murph headed off to the Drake Relays and I had the day at home with the pup. 
• I decided to surprise Murph with an overhaul to the shop in our basement and spent the afternoon getting some storage supplies, unpacking the new mitre saw, moving storage we already had, utilizing the peg board for tool storage, and just getting the space usable in general. Photos to come.

SATURDAY

• Murph went to the Relays again and I hit the gym, Junk Jubilee and lunch with Nic.
• I bartended an event at Hoyt Sherman that evening

SUNDAY

• Church, breakfast and groceries were done by 10:30a
• We attacked the garage together. We emptied the entire space swept and hosed it out. Got rid of anything we weren't using and organized what we had left. I took down some shelves that were in bad spots and useless and we installed a new shelving system to house our shoes, Willy's leash and some cleaning supplies freeing up TONS of space in our coat closet and making our shoes easily organized too, why are shoes a mess at everyone's house?! The awesome part about the shelving is that it was left by the previous owners and I discovered it while cleaning out the shop so all we had to purchase were the support pieces. 
• Staycation wrapped up with watching Marley and Me. I had DVR'd it knowing it would be sad but I bawled. I mean cried my little heart out at the end of it. What a silly way to end our week, but I did make sure to snuggle the pup a little extra last night ;)

YARD WORKING

Since we are still waiting for trim to arrive to finish the inside of the house we decided to tackle the outside over the last 2 weekends. This consisted of pulling up grass, pulling up grass, and pulling up more grass in our back yard. The entire perimeter of our back yard is a garden bed (previous owners decision) and while it is really pretty when it's lush it also comes with a fair amount of maintenance. Grass always creeps through the stone border so we had lots of grass infiltrating the gardens. We also dethatched the yard with our new electric dethatcher (the initial plan was to use a thatching rake and that quickly became an unreasonable task) then mowed and bagged up the remaining mess. I finally attacked 1 portion of our irises and dug up around 40 of them and replanted about 20 of them, giving the rest to a friend. They were starting to choke out other plants and were clustering all over the place so fingers crossed that the replanted ones take! Finally we mulched and mulched and will need to mulch some more but we are edging closer to done. Here is the general contractor and his human gardener hard at work pulling up some grass.

My favorites

I am hopeful that we can still work in building some raised garden beds later this year but I'm not sure if it will fit into the budget after the Murano took a hit to the windshield last week. Couple that with getting keyed last fall and a minor back-up into a pole and we are looking at a sizeable about of work on that poor vehicle.

All of that aside, we are taking 3 days off this week to continue to wrap up little projects with visits from a plumber, electrician, and roofer this week. Are we done yet?!

CHOP CHOP

Currently my hair is about as long as it has ever been. It's been a three year process to grow out my last short hair cut and bangs. Lately, especially after seeing Michelle Williams latest 'do I've been considering short .... like really short. Not like I spend hours a day on it as is, but sometimes I really want a 5 minute style. So I am lusting after these looks right now, it's just so scary thinking about going THAT short. Plus do you fall into the ever dreaded "mom cut" category here? Hmmmmm .....

Love this look on her!

My current favorite

Think the glasses are adorable with this length

A good side and back view

Cute asymmetric front

YOU ARE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN YOU THINK

I encourage you to take 6 minutes of your day to watch this message. Such a simple and great study. It honestly moved me to tears. I think no matter how many of your loved ones tell you that you are beautiful, women still perceive themselves to be the opposite. I know we all have days we look in the mirror and are a mix of emotions, it was so great to see how different others perceive us. I wish everyone could participate in this, and I know I will be telling my friends and family how beautiful they all are more often. Thanks Dove.



See all of the photos on their site here, it's pretty amazing, especially Melinda.

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SHADY BUSINESS

One more project in the remodel is complete! As we wait for all of our trim to arrive I took on the task of finding some new window coverings for the corner kitchen windows. We would have left them bare but with neighbors close on the left side, we wanted to keep some privacy. Here is a reminder of our "before". Oh, these were bad. Old, dirty and burgundy. Now if we were talking Ron Burgundy we'd be okay, but in the case of mini-blinds, not so much.

Ew.

After doing some research and discovering that our windows, of course, were not a standard length, I decided to take on the task of making some roman shades. I did this because:

1. Pattern. Since we have an open concept first floor there isn't anywhere for art to reside. Not to mention everything is basically a solid color in there right now.
2. Cost. I wasn't about to drop over $150 for these two little guys.
3. Custom. While I heavily considered using white faux wood blinds, I thought something a little more custom would suit our tastes better.

That being said I headed off to Pinterest to see what was out there in terms of NO SEW roman blinds. Key words .... NO SEW! After much reading I decided to use this as my base idea. I liked the relaxed look to the shade and making it no sew seemed easy enough.

Inspiration

I met up with Nic at JoAnn's to peruse fabrics and ended up choosing this. 

Simple, relaxed fabric

I liked that the pattern was simple and classic, and that the fabric was a heavier upholstery style, but still very soft. Since we have two windows I knew a bold Ikat or Amy Butler pattern would just be too heavy. This simple stripe coordinated with the solid curtains already over the sliding glass doors, and would be easy to keep straight as I made the shades.

I won't bore you with details, but the only modifications I made were:

1. Adding a liner. One of our windows looks right into our neighbor's kitchen, so a little extra privacy never hurts. I also liked the more finished and polished look so an additional 2 yards of muslin was worth the $10.
2. Using Hem Tape. Like I said, this was a no sew adventure. Me and the iron got real comfortable and I essentially "glued" this bad boy together.
3. Use what you got. Rather than buying an additional pair of dowels for the bottom of the shades I just used the bottom piece of the mini-blinds I took apart.

Below is the final result. Total cost was just about $75 for both. Not SUPER cheap but not a $5 mini-blind solution either. I could have skinnied the cost by not adding a liner, and not using fabric that was close to $30 a yard (thank goodness for 40% off coupons). Time was 1 solid Sunday (6 or so hours) for creation of the panels, and another 2 or so to assemble and hang.

Finished!

I think I'm digging them. Accessorizing our kitchen once it's all done will help a lot to bring the green and blue tones together even more, but for now I am just glad to check one more thing off the list. Also, I eventually will take better photos, this is looking a little pink. Darn cell phones!

C-YA!

This month Murph and I did something VERY exciting! We made our last, yes LAST student loan payment! **insert jump and high-5 here** Since we really decided to buckle down on our finances and get motivated we have paid of Murph's vehicle and all of my loans. Talk about a monkey (or two) off of our back, seriously. We couldn't have done it without the support of our families and are so thankful to only have my car and our house left to go. Hopefully the car will take another year (or less) and then it's on to the house. Getting on board with the budget is the best decision we ever made ... well other than getting married ;) I still highly recommend finding a Financial Peace University class and going EVERY WEEK if you want to get no the pay off train. The budget process was sticky, we got frustrated, but we fought through it and know we are laying a much better path for ourselves, and most importantly our future family. Now we are 1 step closer to being able to be bigger givers than we ever imagined and that will be the BEST feeling ever.

The Seven Baby Steps

1. $1,000 Emergency Fund
2. Debt Snowball
1. Car 1
2. Car 2
3. Student Loans
3. 3-6 Month Emergency Fund
4. 15% of Income to Retirement
5. College Fund for Children
6. Pay Off Home Early
7. Build Wealth and Give!

THIS IS MY JAM

Working on my first mixtape in a good long while. Since making gym visits a focus I needed some motivational music. Currently obsessing over:

Macklemore + Ryan Lewis :: Can't Hold Us


Kid Cudi :: Dat New "New"


Also popped over to EBay and grabbed this bad boy for a whopping $9. Yes I will be wearing my laptop sized phone on my arm now! Hopefully the arm strap is long enough to wrap around my hulking guns.

And because working out requires looking good I splurged on some fantastic new Nike compression capris at the outlet store (hello, that place is dangerous!) officially. in. love.

Speaking of Nike, Nic and I have been utilizing the Nike Training Club App a lot after our cardio. Just an additional 15 minutes of ass kicking is all we can take! Definitely worth the free download.

Finally Murph has encouraged me to take on a race during the Drake Relays again. I've done the 8k twice but they have changed the format to a 6K, 10K or 1/2 marathon this year and I'm considering the 10K distance. After all, I think I deserve a little redemption after this incident ..... um still hysterical to look at.

All in all the workouts are going well. I've even managed to haul myself out of bed at 4:40a to get to the gym before worked a handful of times. Pretty much looking like this in case you wondered ....